By BRADLEY S. KLEIN
Senior WriterPete Dye didn’t hit his career stride until middle age, and now he’s walking into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
He will be the fifth course architect enshrined, joining Charles Blair Macdonald, Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie and Robert Trent Jones Sr.
The announcement (via the Lifetime Achievement category) was to have been made this week during The Players Championship, held at the Dye-designed Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. The layout, the epitome of Dye’s design genius, beguiles with offset angles, holes that are straight but look as if they turn twice, wacky bounces and multiple options, and a diabolical island-green par 3.
It took a while for Dye, 82, to figure out his life calling. He and his wife, Alice, worked as insurance agents in Indianapolis while raising their two sons. Dye was a good-enough player to have won the 1958 Indiana Amateur and qualified for match play three times at the U.S. Amateur.
He designed a series of small courses in the Indianapolis area before an eye-opening trip to Scotland in 1963. After making notes and drawings, he said: “I never again worried that anything I built would be as bold as what I found at Prestwick, St. Andrews or Dornoch.”
The work that followed revolutionized U.S. course design. In planning Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island, S.C., in 1968-69, Dye saw what Robert Trent Jones Sr. was doing a few miles away and simply did the opposite.
Instead of huge, landing-strip tees, Dye built smaller grounds. Rather than 9,000-square-foot, multilayered greens, Dye built them half that size and with subtle contour.
Dye has designed 11 layouts on Golfweek’s Best Modern Course list. Several have hosted major championships, including No. 3 Whistling Straits and No. 20 Ocean Course at Kiawah Island.
Dye has trained many aspiring young architects: his sons Perry and P.B., along with Bill Coore, Tom Doak, Ron Farris, Tim Liddy, Jason McCoy, Lee Schmidt, Bobby Weed and Rod Whitman.
His peers elected him president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, then awarded him the society’s highest honor, the Donald Ross Award, at its 1995 meeting in Scotland. In 2003, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America gave him its ultimate prize: the Old Tom Morris Award.
Not bad for a man who didn’t find his game until the back nine.
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Pete Dye’s best (with Golfweek’s Best ranking among top-100 modern courses):•
Crooked Stick GC, Carmel, Ind. (1966). No. 77. Sharply etched fairways and bold, Alister MacKenzie-style greens. Home to 1991 PGA, 1993 U.S. Women’s Open and 2005 Solheim Cup.
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The Golf Club, New Albany, Ohio (1967). No. 8. Low profile vertically, with much of the feature work created by cutting down rather than building up.
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Harbor Town Golf Links, Hilton Head Island, S.C. (1970). No. 33. Maddingly simple, with tiny, 4,000-square-foot greens, great short par 4s and an up-tempo finishing flurry from the 13th hole to the clubhouse.
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Oak Tree Golf Club, Edmond, Okla. (1975). No. 83. The sharpest, most intriguing set of par 5s he ever built, ranging from the maddeningly long and elusive third hole to the tempting and dangerous 16th.
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TPC at Sawgrass – Players Stadium, Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. (1981). No. 12. Golf’s version of pinball, thanks to sharp angles, multiple landing areas and steep edges, culminating in a revolutionary island green par 3.
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Long Cove Club, Hilton Head Island, S.C. (1982). No. 46. Built right after TPC Sawgrass and completely different, thanks to elegant, long flowing lines and real estate that’s set back.
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Honors Course, Ooltewah, Tenn. (1983). No. 11. Chattanooga’s monument to the great traditions of amateur golf, thanks to Jack Lupton’s leadership and legendary superintendent David Stone’s care.
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Blackwolf Run GC – River Course, Kohler, Wis. (1988). No. 28. Bold, dramatic and with complex angles, with many holes astride the Sheboygan River; 1998 U.S. Women’s Open held here.
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Ocean Course, Kiawah Island, S.C. (1991). No. 20. Relentless demands upon tee shots, with every hole offering wetlands on one side and dunes on the other. Made memorable debut as home of 1991 Ryder Cup.
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Pete Dye GC, Bridgeport, W.Va. (1993). No. 5. Epic visual drama through an abandoned coal field.
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Whistling Straits – Straits Course, Mosel, Wis. (1997). No. 3. Winds from Lake Michigan howl across this massively wide, windswept site where the par 3s all perch on cliffs of doom and 1,200-plus bunkers dazzle and confuse golfers. Home to 2004 PGA Championship.
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Bradley S. Klein is a Golfweek senior writer. To reach him e-mail bklein@golfweek.com.
Posted: 5/7/2008
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